CATASTROPHE
gregated masses fled in a panic. In all probability even the smallest money-lender or dealer in bread was seized with fright, but Sigismund announced the Pope's escape and at the same time urged all to remain, promising to protect the city. Two weeks later, on April 6th, 1415, the Council met in permanent session and reached the following con- clusion, from which only a few of its members dissented: that the Council of Constance represented the entire Church on earth, that it received its power directly from Christ, and that therefore everyone, including the Pope, was obliged to obey it. In a trial that followed John XXIII was deposed, on May 29th, as a simonist and an offender against the code of the Papacy. Broken in spirit, he had already re- ceived in Radolfszel the implacable decree from the mouth of some of his loyal followers. They could now kiss only his hands and his lips and not his foot. On the day when the verdict was announced, he ordered the Papal cross removed from his room. At the same time a goldsmith of Constance was ordered to break up his seal and coat of arms.
On July 4th, Gregory XII, then almost ninety, proclaimed through a legate that he was willing to abdicate under certain conditions. Two days later Huss was put to death at the stake. Neither the Pope nor a Papal tribunal imposed this terrible sentence. It was decreed by the Council of Reform, the spiritual prime movers of which, Gerson and d' Ailly, had themselves vied with each other in opposing the Pope and the hierarchy. This deed, from which the bloody Hussite wars took their rise, followed the example given by the English Crown, and as a seemingly up-to-date method of fighting against revolution excited the Council and the rest of the world far less than it would so many more modern dogmatists of a dogmaless freedom. A year later Muss's courageous friend Hieronymus was also burned at the stake; and the throng of humanists who spent their time in Constance and the "sur- rounding country as diplomatic officials, investigators, and antiquar- ians had occasion to marvel at the spiritual fortitude of a martyr. Among them were Poggio and a future Pope ^Eneas Silvio.
With less difficulty the Council solved the problem of how to de- pose Pedro di Luna, Benedict XIII. He still had a following of four cardinals; and though nearly ninety he ruled the eastern coast of Spain from his castle on a crag above Pensacola, and wrote in imitation of
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